The Ship Ran on Coal Fuel
Titanic needed over 600 tons of coal per day to keep the enormous engines powered, so it left Southampton with over 6,000 tons of coal. That coal was shoveled into large boilers that had three furnaces. The employees, called firemen, shoveled coal into the furnaces in extremely hot and dirty conditions. Many of these men were among the first to die, as the rooms they worked in flooded and watertight doors automatically sealed in an attempt to keep the rest of the ship from flooding.
